Summer Math Practice
By Caroline Wyman
It is important for your students to keep up and practice their math skills during the summer. Once they leave school it is easy to forget how to add, subtract, multiply and divide. Here are some fun and practical ways for them to practice and enjoy math again and not loose the skills they learned this year.
Parent Activities—
Have a lemonade stand
- Decide on the price your lemonade will be per cup, remeber to subtract out the cost of the lemonade and cups that you bought.
- Have your child use mental math or pencil and paper to add and subtract the money for each sale.
- Don't forget to have extra change on hand for your child to use during the transaction.
- If your child is working with other children, ask them to divide the profits in their heads or write it down.
- Extra skills to use...have your child make a colorful poster to display and remember to have them put the price on the poster.
Have a yard sale...mom you will love this one!
- Have your child go through all of their gently used toys, books, movies and other items that you are ready to clean out of your house.
- Talk about pricing. What is reasonable? What would it cost new in the store? Price some toys in a bunch (ex. 4 matchbox cars for $.75 or $.25 each).
- Group alike items together. All stuffed animals in one area, books in another, puzzles somewhere else....
- Remeber to have some spare change and dollar bills on hand so you can make change.
- Have your child figure out the change back in their head. At the end of the day, have your child count up the money and subtract out what you started with. Depending on how you price the items, you can make this an easy task or a challenging one.
- Don't forget to advertise! Have your child make some colorful signs and post them up around your neighborhood.
Go grocery shopping
- Have your child make a shopping list and collect coupons that match the items on the list.
- You can give your child a budget to shop with or not. If you give them a budget, have them keep track of their purchases and remind them to make sure that they don't over spend.
- Have your child do some mental math with rounding in order to keep on track.
- Have your child subtract the coupon from the item's purchase price to see how much they are saving.
- Ask your child to compare prices on similar items.
- Depending on your child's grade level, ask them to find the most economical way to save while shopping. Some examples are product size versus cost, also was the item on sale? How does buy one get one free compared to the single item price?
What a great way to keep your students mind on math this summer!
Caroline Wyman has a degree in Sociology and a Masters in Elementary Education and is the administrator for TeacherNet.com.